Product Manager (New Product Development)

OVERVIEW

OnTrac is seeking a hands-on Product Manager to join a modern product team building cloud-native applications on Google Cloud Platform. This is a builder's role, not an oversight role. You will own the backlog, write the stories, sit with engineers and designers every day, and decide what gets built next based on evidence from real users.

You start from the user and the outcome, not the process. You are as comfortable in a Jira ticket, a Figma file, or a query against product data as you are in front of a client sponsor. When a story is unclear, you rewrite it. When an engineer is blocked on a decision, you make it. When a release ships, you check whether it worked.

The ideal candidate is curious, decisive, technically fluent, and accountable. You structure ambiguous problems, form and test hypotheses, and lead with the answer. You take full ownership of what the team ships, escalate early with a recommendation attached, and never wait to be asked.

This is not a program management or portfolio oversight role. We are looking for someone who is in the weeds of one product with one team, day in and day out.

ENGAGEMENT

• Expected start date: as soon as possible
• Location: Chicago, IL or United States remote
• You must be located in, and authorized to work in, the United States for the full duration of the engagement

PRIMARY DUTIES

These duties are representative rather than exhaustive.

• Backlog Ownership: Own the product backlog end to end. Write user stories and acceptance criteria yourself, slice work into small shippable increments, and keep at least two sprints of ready work in front of the team at all times.
• Product Discovery: Run discovery with UX and engineering: user interviews, usability tests, prototypes, and lightweight experiments. Make sure what the team builds is grounded in user research and evidence, not opinion.
• Daily Team Partnership: Work alongside engineers and designers every day. Join stand-ups, answer questions in the moment, review work in progress, and accept or reject stories against acceptance criteria.
• Prioritization and Trade-offs: Prioritize by user value and business outcome. Make scope, sequencing, and trade-off calls quickly, explain the reasoning, and adjust when the evidence changes.
• Outcome Measurement: Define success measures with the client sponsor at the start of the engagement. Instrument features, track adoption, task success, conversion, or satisfaction after each release, and feed what you learn back into the backlog.
• Technical Fluency: Understand the architecture well enough to discuss APIs, data, and integration trade-offs with engineers and architects. Pull and analyze product data yourself rather than waiting for a report.
• Release Management: Plan and sequence frequent releases through CI/CD with the engineering team. Write release notes and coordinate rollout with client stakeholders.
• Roadmap and Vision: Translate the client's goals into a clear product vision and a near-term roadmap that the team understands and can act on.
• Agile Delivery: Take part fully in Sprint Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives, and SAFe events such as PI Planning, bringing a refined, sized, and dependency-mapped backlog. Work with the Scrum Master on flow and predictability.
• Client Engagement: Be the product voice to client sponsors. Run demos, hold regular one-to-one touch points, anticipate their questions, and shape decisions with clear, evidence-based recommendations.

PATHWAY TO SUCCESS

Be prepared, work with intentional effort, and offer no surprises for our clients and teammates. Anticipate the next question, the next risk, and the next decision before others do.

Measures are set with the client and PMO for each engagement and typically include:

• Outcomes shipped: Features released that move the agreed user and business metrics.
• Backlog health: Ready, well-written work always in front of the team, with few stories returned for clarification.
• Release cadence: Small, frequent releases rather than large, infrequent ones.
• Client confidence: Strong sponsor feedback and satisfaction scores at project close.

By day 30 you will deliver a product baseline (users, goals, current metrics, and backlog health), and by day 90 an agreed roadmap with measurable outcome targets.

EXPECTATIONS

• Customer Facing: You will be a primary voice to the client on the product, with touch points ranging from daily to bi-weekly, including demos, PI Planning, steering committees, and discovery workshops.
• Consulting Environment: You will work in a billable, project-based model, balancing client outcomes with schedule and utilization targets.
• Ownership Mindset: You treat the product as your own. When something is unclear, broken, or at risk, you take the first step to fix it and keep the right people informed.
• Onboarding and Training: The first several weeks include materials, compliance training, and meetings with the people you will work with.

REQUIRED CREDENTIALS

• Bachelor's degree in a related field. An advanced degree is a plus.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• A product mindset: user- and outcome-first, with a real example of what your team shipped, who used it, and how you knew it worked (for example adoption, task success, conversion, or satisfaction).
• At least five years of hands-on Product Manager or Product Owner experience on software or application development teams, personally owning the backlog and writing stories and acceptance criteria.
• Current or recent (last ~5 years) experience at a product-led technology company, or in the digital or product practice of a top-tier consulting firm.
• Experience running product discovery with UX and design: user interviews, usability testing, and prototypes.
• Experience on teams that release frequently with CI/CD, tracking outcome and flow metrics rather than velocity alone.
• Technical fluency: comfortable discussing APIs, data models, and architecture with engineers, and able to analyze product data yourself (for example SQL or analytics tools).
• Strong capability with Jira and Confluence. Experience with Figma or similar design tools.
• Experience working in Scrum and in SAFe or another scaled Agile framework, including PI Planning.
• Polished, concise, executive-ready communication that leads with the answer.
• At least three years in a client-facing role, in consulting or professional services or directly with business stakeholders.

USEFUL QUALIFICATIONS

• CSPO, SAFe POPM, or a similar product certification.
• Experience with GCP or other public cloud application development.
• Hands-on prototyping, analytics, or experimentation tooling (for example A/B testing).
• A background in engineering, design, or data before moving into product.
• Experience in the government or public sector.
• Experience with distributed teams.